


Colorblind

by aquariumsdelight



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, starts off sad but ends happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-14
Updated: 2014-12-14
Packaged: 2018-03-01 09:31:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2768216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquariumsdelight/pseuds/aquariumsdelight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>you've never been able to see color.<br/>everyone else gets glimpses; times where the sky isn't the same tint as a t-shirt and the world seems a little less dull. but you? nah.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colorblind

**Author's Note:**

> so i was editing the new chapter for MWFOT when i found a soulmate aus post  
> i couldn't resist uwu

you’ve never been able to see color.

everyone else gets glimpses; times where the sky isn’t the same tint as a t-shirt and the world seems a little less dull. you can tell when someone’s gotten close too, because their clothes are all different shades of grey. their smile is pure white, all thirty-two teeth shining away. of course, their soulmate will move and all the colors will fade away again, but at least they have that moment. that one time where they can grab their friend and whisper feverishly ‘they’re close!’

but you? nah. for you it’s always been either black or white or something in between. when you first learned about it, your teachers laughed and patted you on the head. they told you not to worry about it now. later, when you were older, you’d see.

so you didn’t worry about it. you stuck to your black sunglasses and mostly-white shirt and kept going. when it got to the point where everybody had seen the color red before and you were still relying on the word on the side of the crayon, you forced yourself to look the other way. soulmates took time, anyways. not everyone started seeing at the same time.

what if they were in india? or china? that was a large enough distance to keep it black and white. and some people never met theirs until they were old. that was a news story the other day, right? ‘old soulmates in their nineties finally meet’. you couldn’t say it didn’t happen.

the people in his school had theories too. the same ones he thought about when he turned off his specially modified turntables and tried to sleep.

maybe you were one of those special cases, the ones who could never see color to begin with. or that your soulmate was dead, from a freak car accident or a sickness as a baby. you never had a chance.

but then they’d started the game, and there was no time for soulmates. whenever you thought about it, you shrugged it off. everyone and everything on earth was gone. john and jade had been getting flickers, but now those had died off. the only one who could see anything was rose, who claimed green in particular seemed to glow.

when you guys built your new world, you would make sure that it was a little more obvious. something that didn’t get you the nickname ‘colorblind’. a name scrawled across your wrist? or a timer, tick-tocking away the moments until you finally met. something that didn’t affect telling splotches of lava apart from rubies.

and suddenly, everything went from being real chill to being really panicked in seconds. as in, you died for a second there. actually got blown up and flew into the green sun. the bright red pjs didn’t soften that fact at all, and you would’ve been totally pissed if it weren’t for one thing.

you can see. you can see the emerald flames of the gigantic thing you just emerged from and the scarlet of the pajamas. you hold your hands up and look at the peachy tone that darkens at your knuckles. your eyes wander across scars from sword fights. you bet your blood doesn’t even look like ink anymore. you turn to look at rose, who seems just as amazed.

of course, you don’t say any of this. of course not, you’re a strider after all. no, you save this for after all the introductions have been made and this troll named karkat has finished freaking out over a bucket beaning him in the head. you wait until a little guy with a sash declaring him the mayor is getting healed up and you’ve found a corner of the meteor to call home. you wait until rose happens to walk by and you pull her in by the arm.

she doesn’t know either, though. ‘maybe they’re on this meteor?’ she suggests, but that’s a little weird. it’s weird because, well, they’re all aliens. so you shrug and she rolls her eyes and the two of you both go your separate ways. besides, you have a lot of things to re-see. there’s no time to figure out who your soulmate is.

if they wanted to love you, they should’ve come when they held you over the toilet bowl and asked if you could tell the difference between the water and the seat.

so a year or two passes, and you don’t think things are too bad. the novelty of seeing things all the way still hasn’t worn off, and you still keep a thesaurus on you just to define that new shade of blue coming off a dream bubble in the distance. some colors are fuzzy, but you don’t mind.

karkat’s in your room at the moment, harping about some troll movie or another. he plugs this box into something that looks vaguely like a caterpillar the size of a cat. somehow, the tv you dragged into here flickers on, and the movie starts. well, the ads do anyway. he falls into place next to you, still talking about relationship dynamics or some other shit. you can’t even follow it anymore.

somehow, his hand ends up on yours when he puts down again. and the colors, man, do they explode. everything is suddenly crystal clear, 1080p, and as vividly bright as the stars, as the green sun itself. the back of your hand turns hypersensitive as your breath swooshes out of your lungs like a popped balloon. you swivel your head to look at karkat. his skin, a warm grey that reminded you of toast back home. eyes that were the same color as his pupil with a red starting to show that you hadn’t seen before.

“i- do you-?” you manage to stutter out. he nods, silently. a breath passes between the two of you, and then he squeezes tighter.

you try to remember everything you wanted to say to him; all the curses and insults, all the ‘where were you’s and ‘fuck this shit’s, but nothing comes to mind.

“I forgive you.” you say. and then the tears fall.


End file.
